Not-so-secret secret here: I can be a bit of a control freak in my own way. It doesn’t manifest in the stereotypical ways… I don’t try to micromanage the people I work with or freak out if there’s snow instead of sun. I know that an honest sense of productive happiness depends on one’s attitude, so I have come up with dozens of strategies to manage my attitude, and I enforce them upon myself with robotic rigor. The use of different colors at different times of year, or the distribution of meditative walks, or the codified shorthand of my to-do lists… these are just a few of these strategies. Sometimes they actually do work. Occasionally they are more burdensome than they are worth. Symbology, personal and cultural, is key… so you can imagine that as I’m approaching my fortieth birthday this year, I’m itching to find some meaning in the event.
I’m hoping to write a series of blog posts – extemporaneous, unscripted, mostly unedited – to reflect on turning 40. I’m doing it mostly for myself, but I’ll post them here in case they are of interest to others. Maybe I’ll finish them, or maybe not. There’s a lot going on.
And this is the fifth.
In our reveries we’re always young,
or at least according to Jung,
but this stab in my side
from a rock that won’t glide
makes my poor body feel like dung.